Through January 28
The Kimbell Art Museum is pleased to present Bonnard’s Worlds, its first exhibition dedicated to the work of French painter Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) and the first major exhibition of Bonnard’s paintings in Texas in nearly forty years. Inspired by the museum’s 2018 acquisition of Bonnard’s Landscape at Le Cannet (1928), the exhibition will explore the sensory realms of experience that fueled the painter’s creative practice—from the most public spaces to the most private. Governed neither by chronology nor geography, but by measures of intimacy, the exhibition will transport the visitor from the landscapes of Paris, Normandy, and the South of France, where Bonnard lived at different times in his life, to the most private interior spaces of his dwellings and thoughts.
Pierre Bonnard, The Palm, 1926, oil on canvas. The Phillips Collection © 2023 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
“The general public is often unaware of Pierre Bonnard and his influence on the trajectory of twentieth century painting,” said Eric Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “A friend of both Monet and Matisse, Bonnard is not only a bridge between Impressionism and the post-Impressionist movements that followed; he is a painter who forged his own visual style, marked by a uniquely nuanced mastery of color, shaped by complex and evocative compositions, and built around representations of the natural spaces, intimate interiors, and people that comprised his world.”
Pierre Bonnard, Twilight (The Game of Croquet), 1892, oil on canvas. Paris, Musée d’Orsay © 2023 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Organized by the Kimbell Art Museum in collaboration with The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, Bonnard’s Worlds brings together 70 paintings, including some of the artist’s most celebrated works from museums in Europe and the United States, as well as many that are unfamiliar to the public from private collections around the world. Representing all periods from Bonnard’s long career, the exhibition leads visitors from wide views of the places Bonnard lived through successively more intimate spaces in loosely defined thematic sections: landscapes, gardens and terraces, windows, dining and living spaces, bedrooms and bathrooms, and self-portraits.
As opposed to the more sweeping chronological arrangement of a traditional retrospective exhibition, Bonnard’s Worlds creates a series of smaller thematic vignettes in which visitors may experience the subtleties of style and approach throughout the artist’s life. As they move through the spaces, visitors are reminded of where the artist has been—both physically and stylistically—giving them the tools to make their own discoveries and reach their own conclusions about the artist and his work.
Pierre Bonnard, The Lamp, c. 1899, oil on canvas. Collection of the Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, Michigan; Gift of The Whiting Foundation and Mr. and Mrs. Donald E. Johnson, 1977.25 © 2023 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
“I am pleased to introduce Pierre Bonnard to new audiences in a way that is so deeply engaging,” said George Shackelford, Kimbell deputy director and exhibition curator. “Bonnard’s Worlds gives us the opportunity to do what a museum does best: gather an artist’s most significant artworks from around the world, consider them outside of their original time and place, and arrange them in ways that broaden our understanding of not only an artist, but our own personal experiences of life, art, history, and ourselves.”
Admission to Bonnard’s Worlds is $18 for adults, $16 for seniors, K–12 educators, students, and military personnel, $14 for ages 6–11, free for children under 6, and $3 for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients. Admission is half-price all day on Tuesdays and after 5 p.m. on Fridays. Admission to the museum’s permanent collection is always free. For more information on the Kimbell Art Museum, including hours, turn to page 13.
Pierre Bonnard, Nu à contre-jour (The Bathroom or The Dressing Room with Pink Sofa), 1908, oil on canvas. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, Inv. 6519 © 2023 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
